Speeches by Cocking.

“Peter, you are essentially saying you do not mind it being ringfenced as long as it suits you. If it does not suit you, you do not want it to be ringfenced.”

“Lewis Cocking, MP for Broxbourne. I am still a Hertfordshire county councillor.”

“I remind the hon. Member that the last Conservative Government recruited 20,000 police officers across the country and the only force not to meet that target was the Metropolitan police under Labour mayor Sadiq Khan.”

“I draw the attention of Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have a school in my constituency that is very good at helping students with education, health and care plans—so much so that it is struggling with the number of students who have EHCPs. Will the Minister meet me to discuss th…”

“The hon. Lady is making an impassioned speech. Does she agree that in some cases social media has made bullying 24 hours a day, because it means that it can happen at any point, even when a child is no longer at school?”

“I often say that I would not like to be a teenager growing up today in an environment dominated by social media. It was bad enough that by the time I got to secondary school everyone had a phone, and by the time I left everyone had a smartphone. There is no doubt that the threats to children have been utterly transform…”

“You have all mentioned planning as an issue, so I want to touch on that a bit more. You are all basically saying, “It is too hard to get planning permission. It takes us too long”. In my experience of when I was on a planning committee, the only reason why it takes too long is that the developer tries to put in absolut…”

“I am Lewis Cocking, Broxbourne.”

“My question has kind of been answered in many different ways, so I will piggy-back on Lee’s. Some of the time it takes to get through the planning system and to discharge those conditions is because developers do not play ball. I have been on a planning committee. I have sat with loads of developers looking at design a…”

“You are not answering my question. There are thousands of planning permissions that are granted out there that could be started tomorrow. You have all mentioned that the planning system is a blocker. These are sites that have planning permission.”

“My hon. Friend makes an important point. I go out and speak to farmers and small business owners, as he does in his constituency, and I have met not one who thinks the Government are on the right path. I do not know who Labour Members speak to in their constituencies because—”

“What my hon. Friend says from a sedentary position is probably correct. Businesses and farmers in my constituency think that the Government have sold them down the river and led them up the garden path—they are doing things that they did not think they would do when they were trying to get into power. We have not heard…”

“Businesses in my constituency are putting off investing and employing local people because of the jobs tax and the Government’s proposed new regulation. I hope that when the Minister winds up, he will say what the Government will do to create the next generation of entrepreneurs. We could turbocharge the education syst…”

“The hon. Gentleman’s party is actually cutting the capital budget for transport. I have made this point time and again, but the Government could take on the utility companies that endlessly dig up the roads so that my constituents and many others across the country have to sit in traffic. That costs the taxpayer and th…”

“I am proud to represent a constituency with so many fantastic small businesses, and employers in Broxbourne are more likely to be small businesses than under the national average. Entrepreneurs in the towns and villages I represent are working hard and taking risks day in, day out, growing our local economy and creatin…”

“I want to talk about how we got to the figure of 500,000. When you were coming up with this proposal within the Department, was that figure of 500,000 in there from the start or did the Department have a different figure in there, but when it got to the Treasury they said, “No, you are not having that. We are changing …”

“That is not true, is it? The priority programme is not just about mayoral, because the ones that are in the priority programme are doing local government reorganisation as well. You cannot say that the priority programme is just about having a mayor.”

“That does not make sense. You have done your priority programme, so you wrote out to people and said, “Do you want to join the priority programme?” Lots of people wrote in and you picked six, so some of those people did not make it on there. When everyone you have written out to submits their next letter, including the…”

“When are we going to get the list of the next tranche of councils that are going to go through this? You have done your initial tranche. They are working on their plans. You have written out to everyone else to say, “We want to hear all the options you have”. When is the next round likely to be announced of councils th…”

“I am Lewis Cocking, the MP for Broxbourne and a Hertfordshire county councillor.”